“My desire to find a person, or institution, with the finance to move us forward has not diminished,” he said, a day after the Merseysiders moved to fifth in the league, two points below the Champions League places, after an away win at Newcastle.

Everton published their annual financial results on Thursday, which suggested that funds were needed to help sustain the Toffees’ run.

The Goodison Park club said they made a net loss of £9.1 million ($14.7 million, 11.2 million euros) in 2011-12 — £3.7 million or nearly 41 percent more than the previous year — while revenue dipped 1.8 percent from £82 million to £80.5 million.

Some 75 percent of expenditure was on players’ salaries, which rose from £58 million in 2010-11 to £63.4 million in 2011-12.

Everton blamed the losses on their poor start to the campaign, which led to a fall in gate receipts but revealed that sales of season tickets had shot up 6.4 percent since the start of this season.

Club chief executive Robert Elstone said the increased expenditure on players’ wages demonstrated their “commitment to first-team success” but manager David Moyes has said that he may not have much cash to spend during the January transfer window.

Instead, he told the Liverpool Daily Post that the most he could hope for was a couple of loan deals.